Where do you spend the most time?
Think about it. Make a list of the top five places.
Just like you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with, you are the average of the 5 places where you spend the most TIME.
When I got this quote from @noahkagan’s mailing list I realised there was something deeply wrong with what I was doing.
During 2015, the places where I spent the most time did n0t include my family:
- Work, in a basement with no windows. Communication at the company wasn’t great and expectations weren’t met. We parted ways in July.
- Home mostly for sleeping. I was alone in my apartment since my girlfriend moved to the other side of the country to study Fine Arts.
- A chunk of my time was spent in tech talks and meetups, either as an attendee, speaker or organiser. Can’t complain about that, I love learning, sharing and giving back to the community.
- Then there were the airports, train stations and taxis.
There’s a running joke among my friends that I’m a major revenue stream for Hailo. This past year I’ve taken 100+ taxis. To me, the more surprising stat is that I took 37 flights. I was making an average of three flights a month, splitting my time between Barcelona (career, friends) and Pontevedra (family) and it was killing me.
Pictures are great, I’m always taking pictures with my phone. Every time I dove into my pictures collection, I saw the cruel reality. Another taxi, another airport, another AVE, another event. And then some small bursts of happiness; a quick trip to the beach with my girlfriend, a video playing with my cat… but there were very far apart.
I felt so disconnected, so alone, it started affecting my performance.
A couple of months ago I made the decision to get control over my life and balance things out. I rented a big van and moved out of my apartment in Barcelona. I planned the first six months of 2016 factoring in everything I wanted to fix.
My rules were:
- Spend the most time with the family, plan activities and have fun.
- Work as little as possible, and 100% remote.
- Travel for work/events once a month at most.
- Travel for fun once a month at least.
So far it’s going great.
This December I haven’t left Galicia/León. I’ve been having fun and relaxing with my family. I’ve hit the gym, and I’m trying to teach my cat to play fetch. We made time for a short road trip to spend the holidays with the family, light some fireworks and have fun.
Regarding work hours, I’ve managed restrain myself to only 10 hours a week through the first three weeks of December. I got back to work on January and I kept it around 10 hours the first week. This past week I had to put some more hours to hit a project milestone. According to my Harvest tracking I was below 30 hours this week but I need to estimate a bit better so this doesn’t happen again.
Co-working is a really cool idea, so I’ve graduated from weekly to full-time co-worker at Espacio Arroelo. It’s a great place with beautiful spots around. I love to get up from my chair and take a walk through the nearby parks when I’m feeling stressed.
I didn’t want to leave the communities I’m involved with in Barcelona so I booked all the flights for the next 4months. I’ll be there at least a week monthly, two for February because of Mobile World Congress. I managed to secure a venue for one of the events I help organise, and I booked dates with them until summer. This will make our job at finding speakers much easier. Booking flights 4 months in advance is also a lot cheaper. I used to pay 150 € for a round trip, now I’m paying 60 €.
Today I’m writing this at the airport, waiting for my flight to Barcelona. It’s going to be a great week. I’m organising two events, handing off a project, meeting a ton of friends and having some fun.
Looking back I see something I like better. For the past month an a half, the places where I’ve spent most time have been: home, my coworking spot at Espacio Arroelo and the gym. That’s who I want to be.
